A man fresh from some handsome win
In a time of plenty,
Takes flight, hope-propelled,
On wings of manly accomplishment.
He’s intent on more than riches.
Men’s joy swells fast, and fast it falls to earth
Disturbed by an adverse pronouncement.
Beings for a day. What is anyone?
What is someone not? A shadow’s dreaming,
That’s man. Yet, when the light of Zeus issues,
Men shine radiant and life is kind.
The scholia have a few interesting things to add to this.
Schol. ad Hom. Od. 10.495
“They leap like shadows”: The rest of the dead apart from Teiresias are shadows and they move like shadows, just like the shadows that follow men who are moving. This term is used instead of souls [psukhai]. Certainly the poet has the rest of the dead come forward for comparison in this, but the rest of the dead move like shadows”
Stobaeus (1.49.54) in discussing shadows and death, notes that “if they meet their near and dear, they cannot see them nor can they converse with them, but they are walled off from aesthetic reality, they appear to them something like shadows”
In an earlier post, I presented a series of passages that compared man’s life to a shadow. Thanks to a twitter contribution from deadgod, I have to post a little more…
Sophocles, fr. 945
“O wretched and mortal race of men:
We are nothing more than image of shadows,
Wandering back and forth, an excessive weight on the earth.
The scholia have a few interesting things to add to this.
Schol. ad Hom. Od. 10.495
“They leap like shadows”: The rest of the dead apart from Teiresias are shadows and they move like shadows, just like the shadows that follow men who are moving. This term is used instead of souls [psukhai]. Certainly the poet has the rest of the dead come forward for comparison in this, but the rest of the dead move like shadows”
Stobaeus (1.49.54) in discussing shadows and death, notes that “if they meet their near and dear, they cannot see them nor can they converse with them, but they are walled off from aesthetic reality, they appear to them something like shadows”
